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Hans-Peter Feldmann Talks to Hans-Ulrich Obrist

“Art is a function to solve problems. That is what art has been doing since the stone ages.” Artist Hans-Peter Feldmann talks to curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist about the similarities between cave paintings and the walls of contemporary men’s toilets. Read more …

Art and dreams have something in common, according to German artist Hans-Peter Feldmann (b.1941): “If you have a nightmare which comes again and again, and write it down very carefully, it disappears.” When you dream, write, draw etc., it is a means for getting stuff out and getting rid of problems.

In this video Feldmann is “interviewed” by his old friend, the Swiss curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist (b.1968) from the Serpentine Gallery in London. Obrist talks about how he got started as an artist, his first exhibitions and much more. In the 1960s Feldmann studied painting in Austria, but felt that he was a bad painter and thus not a “proper” artist. He then dropped out and started producing small handmade books that would later become a signature part of his work. The books were something which started in early childhood, just after the war, when there were few books and no toys for children to play with, he explains. In response to this, Feldmann started collecting pictures, cutting and pasting them in order to create his own books.